MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.

“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.

Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention.

The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.

“In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said in a telephone interview Saturday. Fighting the ratings game, he added, “the bottom line is that we’re experiencing incredible success.”

But as the past two weeks have shown, that success has a downside. When the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin lamented media bias during her speech, attendees of the Republican convention loudly chanted “NBC.”

In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

The employee, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because the network does not permit its people to speak to the media without authorization. (The New York Times and NBC News have a content-sharing arrangement exclusively for political coverage.)

Mr. Olbermann, a 49-year-old former sportscaster, has become the face of the more aggressive MSNBC, and the lightning rod for much of the criticism. His program “Countdown,” now a liberal institution, was created by Mr. Olbermann in 2003 but it found its voice in his gnawing dissent regarding the Bush administration, often in the form of “special comment” segments.

As Mr. Olbermann raised his voice, his ratings rose as well, and he now reaches more than one million viewers a night, a higher television rating than any other show in the troubled 12-year history of the network. As a result, his identity largely defines MSNBC. “They have banked the entirety of the network on Keith Olbermann,” one employee said.

In January, Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.

But in the past two weeks, that line has been blurred. On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat.

“I’m sorry, it’s necessary to say this,” he began. After saying that the video had exploited the memories of the dead, he directly apologized to viewers who were offended. Then, sounding like a network executive, he said it was “probably not appropriate to be shown.”

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Olbermann said that moment — and the perception that he is “not utterly neutral” — restarted months-old conversations about his role on political nights.

“I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue,” he said.

“Countdown” will still be shown before the three fall debates and a second edition will be shown sometime afterwards, following the program anchored by Mr. Gregory.

The change casts new doubt on what some staff members believe is an effective programming strategy: prime-time talk of a liberal sort. A like-minded talk show will now follow “Countdown” at 9 p.m.: “The Rachel Maddow Show,” hosted by the liberal radio host, begins Monday.

Mr. Griffin, MSNBC’s president, denies that it has an ideology. “I think ideology means we think one way, and we don’t,” he said. Rather than label MSNBC’s prime time as left-leaning, he says it has passion and point of view.

But MSNBC is the cable arm of NBC News, the dispassionate news division of NBC Universal. MSNBC, “Today” and “NBC Nightly News” share some staff members, workspace and content. And some critics are claiming they also share a political affiliation.

The McCain campaign has filed letters of complaint to the news division about its coverage and openly tied MSNBC to it. Tension between the network and the campaign hit an apex the day Mr. McCain announced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. MSNBC had reported Friday morning that Ms. Palin’s plane was enroute to the announcement and she was likely the pick. But McCain campaign officials warned the network off, with one official going so far as to say that all of the candidates on the short list were on their way — which MSNBC then reported.

“The fact that it was reported in real time was very embarrassing,” said a senior MSNBC official. “We were told, ‘No, it’s not Sarah Palin and you don’t know who it is.’ ”

Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, the past and present anchors of “NBC Nightly News,” have told friends and colleagues that they are finding it tougher and tougher to defend the cable arm of the news division, even while they anchored daytime hours of convention coverage on MSNBC and contributed commentary each evening.

Mr. Williams did not respond to a request for comment and Mr. Brokaw declined to comment. At a panel discussion in Denver, Mr. Brokaw acknowledged that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews had “gone too far” at times, but emphasized they were “not the only voices” on MSNBC, according to The Washington Post.

Al Hunt, the executive Washington bureau chief of Bloomberg News, said that the entire news division was being singled out by Republicans because of the work of partisans like Mr. Olbermann. “To go and tar the whole news network and Brokaw and Mitchell is grossly unfair,” he said, referring to the NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell.

Some tensions have spilled out on-screen. On the first night in Denver, as the fellow MSNBC host Joe Scarborough talked about the resurgence of the McCain campaign, Mr. Olbermann dismissed it by saying: “Jesus, Joe, why don’t you get a shovel?”

The following night, Mr. Olbermann and his co-anchor for convention coverage, Mr. Matthews, had their own squabble after Mr. Olbermann observed that Mr. Matthews had talked too long.

Some staff members said the tension led to the network’s decision to keep Mr. Olbermann in New York for the Republican convention, after he ran the desk in Denver during the Democratic convention. MSNBC said that he stayed in New York to anchor coverage of Hurricane Gustav. But some workers say there were other reasons — namely, that Mr. Olbermann was concerned about his safety in St. Paul, given the loud crowds at MSNBC’s set in Denver.

NBC Universal executives are also known to be concerned about the perception that MSNBC’s partisan tilt in prime time is bleeding into the rest of the programming day. On a recent Friday afternoon, a graphic labeled “Breaking News” asked: “How many houses does Palin add to the Republican ticket?” Mr. Griffin called the graphic “an embarrassment.”

According to three staff members, Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, and Steve Capus, president of NBC News, considered flying to the Republican convention in Minnesota last week to address the lingering tensions.

Up to now, the company’s public support for MSNBC’s strategy has been enthusiastic. At an anniversary party for Mr. Olbermann in April, Mr. Zucker called “Countdown” “one of the signature brands of the entire company.”

Just last year, Mr. Olbermann signed a four-year, $4-million-a-year contract with MSNBC. NBC is close to supplementing that contract with Mr. Olbermann, extending his deal through 2013 — and ensuring that he will be on MSNBC through the next election.

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seriously though, this is a good move by MSNBC. Those 2 needed to be removed, and if we could just close down MSNBC and Foxnews we might be in good shape to just get real news

Foxnews is at least respectful in their coverage. MSNBC went out of their way to spin coverage, cutting to people yawning during exciting parts of the speeches, cutting out in the middle of Lieberman's speech to have a "special report" on how many seats weren't filled, and showing protesters every chance they get.

I watched Foxnews' coverage and I never got the impression that they were disrespecting the dems during their "big week".

Foxnews is at least respectful in their coverage. MSNBC went out of their way to spin coverage, cutting to people yawning during exciting parts of the speeches, cutting out in the middle of Lieberman's speech to have a "special report" on how many seats weren't filled, and showing protesters every chance they get.

I watched Foxnews' coverage and I never got the impression that they were disrespecting the dems during their "big week".

I will grant you MSNBC is downright awful, however, did you watch anything with that dope Hannity? The funniest thing about Hannity and Colmes, is Hannity is offensive at times and completely out of context, where Colmes sits there with this lost look on his face, not knowing if he is supposed to support his party or not.

I will grant you MSNBC is downright awful, however, did you watch anything with that dope Hannity? The funniest thing about Hannity and Colmes, is Hannity is offensive at times and completely out of context, where Colmes sits there with this lost look on his face, not knowing if he is supposed to support his party or not.

Either way, both stations are a disgrace

Yes but as you have mentioned, its Hannity AND Colmes. Hannity is pure commentator and not news and the whole premise of the show is a left/right opinion...as per the old CNN CrossFire with Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala in which Tucker would get berated constantly.

They get paid to be extreme and close minded and they most certainly never tout themselves as journalists.

Fox leans a bit right, CNN leans a bit left. There is a reason it was called the Clinton News Network in the 90's. MSNBC is so off the charts that things like this happen and to lump them with Fox is a pretty big stretch.

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Fox leans a bit right, CNN leans a bit left. There is a reason it was called the Clinton News Network in the 90's. MSNBC is so off the charts that things like this happen and to lump them with Fox is a pretty big stretch.

I actually find CNN the most moderate, MSNBC is in another spectrum, and I feel that Fox is approaching the other side of the spectrum.

I do have to say that the one or two I like on CNN (besides Lou Dobbs) is Ed Rollins (who was the chairman of Huckabee's campaign) and Jack Cafferty who just hates everyone. I have given up watching too much of the other 2 networks. Too biased IMO

I actually find CNN the most moderate, MSNBC is in another spectrum, and I feel that Fox is approaching the other side of the spectrum.

Fox is nowhere near MSNBC. I really can't understand how people can see that considering MSNBC is bascially all one sided. I think they have 2 conservatives on the whole network...one is 6am (Scarborough) in the morning and the other is Buchanan. People say that because they stand out in a sea of traditional liberal oriented media.

CNN's anchors are all Democrats (admittedly)...except Lou Dobbs. Cafferty is a liberal. While they do have many more Republican commentators than MSNBC and their anchors for the most part try to go down the middle, they still lean a bit left. When you look at their convention coverage panels its still favors Democrats but they do get their token Repubs in there.

The majority of their commentators worked for Clinton (as many of Fox's worked for Bush), hence the Clinton News Network still applies. 10x better than MSNBC is. ABC I think does a good job as well.

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It's all about McNeil Lehrer for plain-as-toast reporting IMO. Those guys are so boring it's hard to watch sometimes. BBC is also a good pick but you have to wade through boring segments on countries that don't matter.

CNN has really gotten awful in the last several years with all of their info-tainment shows like Glenn Douchebag Beck and Nancy Nails-on-a-chalkboard Grace. It's still the fastest place to get the headlines in the middle of the day, but they still suck.